A/N: I know you would much rather have a new chapter for The Thing About Memories, but my muse has died and I can't really write for that fandom anymore, at least for now. To tide you over until the next update, here is a thing I wrote ages ago. If there's anything wrong with it, please let me know via review! Again, sorry for my temporary hiatus.
-Faithe
Annabeth remembers stargazing with Percy last summer, after the war. They had eaten strawberries from the fields and he had spotted a shooting star.
What did you wish for? He asks, swinging their linked hands as they headed back to their cabins.
She had laughed and refused to tell, and Percy had pestered her until she finally had said jokingly that her wish had been for him to go away and stop bothering her. He mock-pouted, and kissed her goodnight outside of the Athena cabin before heading to his own. Annabeth had gone to sleep smiling.
Once, four years ago, she would have done anything to make Percy go away.
Now she would give all the wishes in the world for him to be right here beside her, where he belongs.
Days turn to months, and Annabeth barely sleeps. She throws all her energy into the search, but she still snaps awake in the middle of the night, searching for something- someone- who she knows will not be there.
She does not wake up from nightmares. She wakes from memories.
All she wants to do is stay in her dreams, back to the time when Percy was safe by her side. But she can't, and almost cries at the injustice of it.
She is so tired.
But the next day, she gets up from her bunk, and pretends she had a full night's sleep. Everyone else pretends that her eyes aren't red and puffy, that she stumbles from exhaustion and snaps at people more often, because why can't they find Percy? They just aren't trying hard enough- and her clever Athena brain thinks out all the horrible situations Percy might be in, all the injuries he might've sustained, without her by his side.
She somehow, irrationally, thinks that she is betraying Percy somehow, by not sticking by him, by not fighting and bleeding and dying beside him. Annabeth hates irrationality, so she tries harder, looks anywhere and everywhere for her missing Seaweed Brain, because this irrationality will be solved, will disappear once he is by her side once again.
(she dreams of wishing stars and strawberries on a blanket long ago, and that makes waking that much harder.)